I'll be attending, signing books, and being on panels at the free Baltimore Book Festival Friday September 28-Saturday September 29th. (the festival is through Sunday but I leave Saturday night).

They expect 50,000 people. I hope to see some friendly faces while I'm down there.

The Childrens Bookstore will be selling copies of After edited by me and Terri Windling. This should be its first public appearance (the book will be officially out October 9th)

Friday, September 286pm Once Upon a Slightly Different TimeFive authors and editor Ellen Datlow offer their thoughts on the recreation and retelling of fairy tales for a modern audience.Panelists include Shannon Hale, Goose Girl, Ellen Datlow, Troll's-Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales, Michael Buckley, The Sisters Grimm Book 9: The Council of Mirrors, Adam Gidwitz, In a Glass Grimmly, Jessica Day George, Princess of the Midnight Ball, and Sarah Beth Durst, Vessel. Childrens Bookstores Stage

Saturday, September 29

The rest of my events take place under the aegis of SFWA. They will be selling a selection of OP titles that I'm shipping today and include hardcover copies of YBFH #6, 10, 11, 16, 17, and 20 plus Inferno, Off Limits, Blood is Not EnoughNaked City (op in hardcover), Black Swan, White Raven, and a couple of trade paperbacks.

12-noon: autographing SFWA to sell books

1-1:50 Steampunk and gaslight fantasy: It’s Hot and on Top. Come talk with our steampunk/gaslight authors and editors about this immensely popular new genre

4-4:50 YA Dreams: The young adult genre is booming in both books and movies

I'd like to thank those of you who made donations in exchange for galleys/books.

The total amount donated is: $325 unless I counted wrong. One person donated above and beyond the asked for $25 for TEETH.

I'll be getting everything signed tomorrow at the KGB reading and catch one straggler from Naked City on Friday. I'll send everything out some time next week.I have to find acquire packing envelopes and then hike to the post office.

Rob Killheffer moved 8 cartons (some small most large) of books from my apt and we put them into storage. We removed 4 cartons of correspondence and brought them TO my apartment so that they can be shipped (hopefully soon) to The University of Liverpool.

Why do I make this announcement? Because it is the first time I have been able to do so for at least ten years. (some of you know the rest so you can stop reading now or skip to the last paragraph)

Background: books books, everywhere books. I've been working at home since 1998 or so and at that point in my life I had to move cartons of books from my OMNI Office (where they had been collected inside my office and outside in the suite for 17 years) to my apartment and to storage.

I have been editing a years best anthology for about 25 years now. Books come in, most (maybe 95% go out) but that's still that means many books stay. And where do they stay? In my apartment until I persuade/cajole/bribe one or two strapping males to move cartons into my storage locker.

Anyway, incoming books start their journeys on my kitchen table, as they await for me to move them into my living room and bedroom where they will eventually get my attention and I will read them for the next best of the year. The horror books in the pile will be moved relatively quickly.

But some books --those that are not priority reading--ie not horror, or books that I've picked up (and actually even occasionally bought) that interest me enough to hang on to until I figure out what to do with them --those are the ones that start piling up on the kitchen table. And remain for years. *

So what changed you may ask.

Rick Lieder house/cat sat for me in early January. When I came home, the kitchen table was CLEARED!!!! Now those books did not disappear. In fact, they were all moved to a chair at the end of the table so he could work on his laptop. It was the first time I've seen the tabletop for, um....a very long time. As it happens, some new books made their way onto the tabletop but not enough to completely block my view of it.

Today: I've no idea what came over me but as I was making myself brunch, I suddenly got the urge to sit at the table. I gently shoved the small piles of books that have gathered in the past month creating enough space for me to eat there. (with enough room to read a magazine).

*I will admit that part of the reason I stopped eating at the kitchen table was the late lamented Dinah, who always insisted on eating from my plate and would drag food off when I wasn't looking.

I have a little time before I have to begin reading for The Best Horror of the Year, volume four, so have been picking through books I missed or that I bought (yes, Virginia, even I occasionally buy books--usually art/photography books)and haven't had the presence of mind to look through and/or read.

I just picked up Rare:Portraits of America's Endangered Species by Joel Sartore. The portraits are of animals and plants ranging from the Columbia Basin Pygmy Rabbit (the next to last was Bryn, who was photographed a few months before she died in 2008. The last of the breed, another female, died a few months later)to the Salt Creek Tiger Beetle (194 remain), the California Condor, and the Red Wolf. I read the first essay and started crying. I think this will have to be something I read in small doses.

So, on to something else. Maybe I'll return to The Gun by C.J. Chivers, about the AK-47. That'll be cheery.

Finished The Girl Who Played With Fire and am on The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest-enjoying it so far.

Watched Paul Newman, Melanie Griffith, Bruce Willis, and some other folk in Nobody's Fool, based on the novel by Richard Russo. It's about a depressed town in upstate NY. Newman is a 60 year old living alone for decades after he left his wife and son when the boy was about a year old. Son and wife and two kids come for a visit. Everyone's really good in it and Newman deserved his Oscar. Interesting and satisfying.

The Italian Job original with Michael Caine and of all people Noel Coward! Fun caper movie very much of the 60s. Cliffhanger of an ending.

The Jacket with Adrian Brody, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kris Kristofferson, Daniel Craig, and Keira Knightly about a veteran of the first Gulf War who after being shot in the head remembers very little about himself and is pretty screwed up. He ends up in a mental hospital where one of the psychiatrists (Kristofferson) subjects him to a torturous, experimental treatment. I liked it much more than I expected. I thought it was going to be a horror movie, which it's not at all. Thriller and creepy at times and occasionally scary. Interesting use of color throughout the movie. Kind of saturated, I think.

Happily, my new netbook is set up thanks to Jim Freund (I tried it and it works. Yay!) and my printer four in one has been set up by Matt Kressel. And it works. Another yay--thanks guys.

Hoping a friend will take the HP printer off my hands soon.

Finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which I loved. I think I'm glad I saw the movie first because the actress who plays Lisbeth is so perfect. Having seen the movie I don't feel I really needed to read the book, although there is far more about the relationship between Mikael Blomkvist and Erika Berger (the publisher) in the book. Having seen the movie helped keep the members of the Vanger family straight--I have a feeling that if I read the book first I might have been very confused.

I've just started The Girl Who Played With Fire and it immediately draws the reader in.

I had two wonderful meals this past week: Sushi, at my local Japanese restaurant with lots of Nigori unfiltered cold sake, plenty of sushi and various flavors of mochi (the ice cream wrapped in pounded sticky rice). Delicious. Then Wednesday I celebrated a friend's birthday at Café Soleil on the upper west side. Wine flowed, food was eaten, women talked (it was 13 women) and desserts were tasted. It was a fine night.

This evening I watched It's Complicated, the recent comedy with Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin. Streep and Baldwin have been divorced ten years and he's remarried to the younger woman with whom he cheated on Streep. Streep and Baldwin start having an affair just as she's becoming interested in Martin. Streep and Baldwin are great in it. Martin is stiff. Not as funny as I would have liked but pleasant enough.

The second movie of the evening is the amazing French movie Innocence, which has to be one of the creepiest movies I've ever seen. It opens with a coffin and a bunch of little girls opening it and goes on from there. About thirty girls from 6-11 years old are living within a "park" that houses a school. They are taught by two young women and catered to by a bunch of elderly servants. Marion Cottilard is one of the teachers. It's written and directed by Lucile Hadzihalilovic (her first full length film) and based on a novella by Frank Wedekind (author of the hit musical Spring Awakening. Interestingly, after listening to a long interview with Hadzihalilovic, the movie is not intended to be creepy. But see it for yourself.

This interview with someone from the FTC demonstrates the ignorance of the FTC when it comes to book publishing and book reviewing:

The new rule, which you might have heard about, is regarding those who blog about items for which they receive review copies (books are only one of the types of material received and of course are a drop in the bucket compared to tech products: